Reading Network Fiction (2003) by David Ciccoricco
Chapter 2 “Network Vistas – Folding the Cognitive Map”
The “spatiality” of writing as print vs. writing in the digital world in terms of how readers navigate it.
concrete vs. abstract space / topographical (Bolter) vs. topological (Aarseth)
“the relationships between nodes remain independent of and unchanged by their location in space” (Ciccoricco 46)
The space of network fiction has a “dual ontology” – it can be driven as much by narrative as it is by image
“Network fictions, therefore, consist of not only a representation of material but also a representation of structure” (Ciccoricco 49)
How do readers orient themselves in printed text, as opposed to the space of network fictions?
Network fictions are further complicated by repeated/recurring lexias. This also complicates our understanding as readers of the ‘size’ of a text, the ‘depth’ of interconnections, ‘missed’ material
What is a cognitive map?
Jameson’s disorienting postmodernist landscape analogy of a hotel building
Van Dijk’s model of textual comprehension
David Herman (2000) and Marie-Laure Ryan (2003) “clarify the relationship of the cognitive map and textuality” (Ciccoricco 54)
cognitive narratology that combines discourse analysis, cognitive psychology, and literary criticism.
“Not only does the form of a network fiction require conceptualization, but the conceptualization always to some degree creates the form” (Ciccoricco 54).
Architectonic vs. semantic space (Nancy Kaplan and Stuart Moulthrop)
Semantic space as “deeply connected to the production of meaning [and] interpretation” in contrast to architectonic space which is based on the spatiality of the screen, its elements and thus “emerges more clearly in the act of reading or reception” (Ciccoricco 56)
So what about reader agency and input?
How can we read texts that are inherently in structural flux?
“a series of self-referential movements that evokes the self-referentiality of proprioceptive experience” (Ciccoricco 61)
A new literature of exhaustion?? (68-9)
Textual Kinetics and narrative structure – consider Woolf’s “Mrs Dallaway” vs. the e-poetry we have read…
In terms of the complexity of the textual element of digital literature, do we necessarily need a similar complex digital space/interface?
“an effective network aesthetic maintains some form of dialogue between the discursive, verbal, and conceptual on the one hand, and the formal, performative, and material on the other” (Ciccoricco 71)
Reading Network Fiction (2003) by David Ciccoricco
Chapter 2 “Network Vistas – Folding the Cognitive Map”
How do readers orient themselves in printed text, as opposed to the space of network fictions?
So what about reader agency and input?
How can we read texts that are inherently in structural flux?
In terms of the complexity of the textual element of digital literature, do we necessarily need a similar complex digital space/interface?